Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    THE chaotic mixture of bikes and pedestrians at Shenzhen Bay Park improved after a rule required app-based bike operators to withhold their bikes for one day yesterday, the last day of the three-day Qingming Festival holiday.

    Thanks to the fine weather, the coastal park in Nanshan District saw an average of 300,000 visitors and nearly 10,000 app-based bikes a day Sunday and Monday. The large number of bicycles and random parking along the sightseeing road by the coast left only a 1-meter space for people to pass and raised safety concerns about overcrowding at the park.

    “The situation became worse Monday afternoon despite we arranged 20 volunteers and 80 employees to guide and try to separate pedestrians and bicycle riders,” said Shao Zhifang, head of the Shenzhen Bay Park management.

    Following the requirement of the city’s urban administration and the Nanshan District Government Monday, the five major operators collected their vehicles from the area overnight.

    The Nanshan government said yesterday it will work with five shared bike operators to set up a long-standing management mechanism to regulate the use and parking of shared bikes on workdays, weekends and public holidays.

    Monday’s chaos, which went viral on the Internet, apparently deterred some visitors, as the park was visited by 250,000 people by 5 p.m. yesterday, 50,000 less than Monday, according to its management.

    Some video clips uploaded by visitors Monday showed that the bikes had occupied at least two-thirds of the width of the coastal sight-seeing road and some riders had parked their bikes in the congested and crowded areas, leaving no room for others to pass.

    Random parking has been an increasing problem since app-based bikes became popular in October last year. So far there are at least 320,000 bikes on Shenzhen streets. In Shenzhen Bay Park, which is rated as the No. 1 cycling and biking area, the problem is most prominent.

    The problem has also drawn the criticism of netizens over the poor management of app-based bikes by the operators and the civility of bike riders.

    “The park should ban or limit the number of bicycles. A one-day ban isn’t enough. I think the government and park management should have a comprehensive plan to solve the issue,” a netizen identified as Gao Lan said in a post.

    Another netizen thought it was time to take measures to manage app-based bikes as they are becoming a hazard to the public and traffic safety.

    “App-based bike operators actually took and made public areas their business areas. Peddlers aren’t allowed to do business on the street, so why are bikes allowed to be parked randomly on the street? The operators should pay fees for occupying public resources and set up fixed parking stands,” a netizen said.

     A lawyer, Wang Yonghao, said that the app-based bike isn’t a sharing economy that makes full use of idle social resources. Instead, in a strict sense, it is bike-leasing business that uses apps. The leasing business has occupied public resources and disrupted basic social order, so Wang suggested that bike operators set up a digital fence through their apps to ban riders from parking bikes in restricted areas.

    Before the popularity of app-based bikes, bike rental service stations had been set up along the coastal park, offering their services by charging higher fees. The bike rental service business has greatly dropped in the past six months.

    A netizen suggested banning app-based bikes from the park and adopting the bike rental service to reduce the number of bicycles.

    Shenzhen Bay Park, which opened to the public on the eve of the 2011 Shenzhen Universiade, is the longest coastal park in Shenzhen.

    The 108-hectare park extends from Mangrove Ecological Park in the east to the bank of Shenzhen Bay Checkpoint in the west. It includes 13 regional theme parks for entertainment, sports, sightseeing and leisure and a 10-km bicycle lane that runs parallel to the pedestrian road.